Life lessons from my daughter

Two major milestones occurred with my daughter in the past few weeks: She clocked one (Yay!), and took her first baby step – all by herself (double yay!) As can be expected, my hubby and I are ecstatic, same goes for her two older siblings who can’t help being thrilled to watch her walk. Of course, ever since she started walking, I’ve had less ‘me’ time and have switched roles from Mommy to Bodyguard.  She wants to go everywhere her little feet can take her, and that includes the bathroom to play with the toilet water and the kitchen to try out the knobs of the stove. Perhaps, she’s going to be the next Top Chef in Bravo’s TV cooking contest, who knows?

On her little face, I see beams of joy when she walks; well, more like totter. Since she has yet to master the fine art of walking with a nice steady gait, it isn’t uncommon to see her fall. And several times too. One would think that in spite of all her many falls that she would just sit out the rest of her walk, ehrm…Again, I mean, totter. But my daughter? Oh no! She is up, in a quick flash too, like nothing ever happened. In fact, her next step is often taken with a bolder attitude. I’m thinking God blessed her with the strongest bones possible, because if it were me doing a third of her falls, I would be a paralytic by now.

So it occurred to me this morning as I watched her take her walk,- pardonez moi, I meant totter, – accompanied by more than one fall that it would be super nice if I learned to deal with life’s challenges the way my daughter deals with her tottering. Instead of sitting down in self-pity and becoming resigned to the seemingly insurmountable task that always has me landing on my butt whenever I try to tackle it, I could just get up, shake off the dust of failure, and keep on working to overcome my challenge until I’m its master.

Life was never meant to be lived without a few bumps in the road and for some, if not for most of us, we’ve got more than a few bumps in our life’s journey; more like humongous portholes it seems. But we don’t have to give up on life. We don’t have to let the task of living be our master. We could just get up, it’s a choice by the way – shake it off and keep at it. We may be tottering now, but if we keep at it, we’ll walk. We’ll even run and some very lucky ones may fly in the success of being part of the living. The most important thing is to remain constitent, taking it one day at a time until that challenge is well managed or totally disappears.

From my heart to your heart, have a most lovely day!

P.S: Two copies of Love at Dawn, my second book is up for grabs – courtesy of the amazing romance writers of West Africa (RWoWA). It’s the October give away contest, you know. Last month, one lucky winner won a copy of Bestselling author, Myne Whitman’s novel, and this October, you could be the winner of my second published novel, Love at Dawn. You’ll have to subscribe to the RWoWA site to be entered in for the contest and /or like their page on Facebook. It’s so easy, even a caveman can do it, said in the famous words of my GEICO commercial.

Categories: Blog | Tags: , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Post navigation

7 thoughts on “Life lessons from my daughter

  1. Well spoken, Lara! Here’s to never giving up till we overcome every obstacle and accomplish our goals.

  2. Aww..it must be a wonderful experience even though you’ve already been through it two times before:-)

    Its amazing what we can learn from children. And to think they’re supposed to be learning from us. Kids are so carefree, sometimes I miss being a child myself. Great post. Thanks for sharing. Somewhere along the way i got a little teary-eyed – maybe it was her determination, i don’t know:-)

    • Nicole, it’s amazing what we learn from Kids. You know, sometimes I think God gives us children so we can know more of who He is and so that we can learn more about how we ought to deal with life’s challenges. As par being teary eyed, I get very emotional watching her walk too; yes, it’s true that I’ve been through this three times, but the thing is, each child is special and it’s a milestone that always leaves one happily teary eyed.

  3. I really liked the way you used your daughter to illustrate your story
    I personally love the company of the very old and the very young – no hidden agenda, a true appreciation of the gift of life and an acceptance of ups and downs.
    Thanks for dropping by my blog

    • NIL, I love, love, love your blog. It has a happy feel to it; feels more like I’m in a party of blogs. Your posts, altleast all of the ones I read, had this humor touch that left me laughing. Glad you came hopping to mine. Blessings!

  4. Awww congrats on witnessing your baby reaching her first year and walking. It’s such a joy and blessing to see children reaching their milestones, isn’t it? And your illustration is spot on – I see it too with my baby. She’s so determined to try, try, and try again until she perfects her next move – whether it is rolling over or crawling. As an adult, it is inspiring to watch. May we be so resilient in our efforts to tackle life too 🙂

Leave a Reply to Naijamum in L. Cancel reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

Blog at WordPress.com.

%d bloggers like this: